Sunday, May 25, 2008

I made a TARDIS

This post started off as a comment in Lara's blog about the potential of mess, but somehow started to grow into a post in itself and has been sitting in my blogger drafts file for nearly a month. Luckily, it fits my latest FO, so I'll can finally blog it up. I made a TARDIS (shhh, don't tell Auntie Beeb). Ravelled here.

For those who don't know what a TARDIS is, it's the time machine in Dr Who. It's capital letters because it is an acroynm for Time And Relative Dimension in Space. For the purposes of this post, what you really need to know is that its bigger in the inside that the out.

While I was knitting the thing, someone asked what it is for (its a glasses case, by the way, hence the photos), and flatmate-Kirsty pointed out a real TARDIS would actually be a lot more use and instructed me, in her ironically firm way, that I really should be knitting a real one. She's right; a bit of 'relative dimension in space' would be a good thing. Though, specifically, dimension in space with shelving. We so need more storage in our flat.

And this is what brings me to my response to Lara. Her point was inspired by Felix's point that much of mess is a matter of deferring the delight in the everyday. Lara celebrates this, delighting in the possibilities of her craft cupboard. But for me, the idea of such a pile of possibilities just makes my skin crawl. This is why I like to keep my stash generally so low. I hate excess stuff. Yarn, furniture, mugs, food, anything. I never realised how much I hate it until living with Kirsty, as she is entirely the opposite. This is the one area in which our flatshare resembles the odd couple. I have a hatred of hoarding: she can't live without it. I'm sure neither of us would notice this as odd except we share living space, but after nearly four years of the personality clash, I'm starting to wonder if both of us don't boarder on the obsessive.

Credit where credit is due: Kirsty's hoarding includes keeping stuff that'll be useful later, she's not just stockpiling deferred moments of consumption (a point Lara's post also notes neatly). I remember visiting a waste management center in Germany when I was 18 (don't I have all the exciting holidays?) and being delighted to hear they collect things they can't recycle yet and store them in disused mines until they've worked out a way to use them efficiently. Somewhere near Berlin there is a cave-full of batteries. That is sort of wonderful, isn't it?

Maybe I just need to implement a way of organising these 'deferred moments' (be they hobby, chore or a bit of both), so they won't feel like a mess. Maybe we just need a bigger flat. Or more time. That, or David Tennant and his handy time-traveling box with the giant insides. For now, all this one does is store my glasses.

This is fabulous. Inspired to make a glasses case. I've seen a couple of patterns for a knit Tardis and knit Dalek, but apparently they had to be taken down due to licensing issues with the BBC?? Lame!

oooh - Where to start with my comment on this post?! Such an excellent post, well worth the wait. One of the things I love most at the moment about blogging is the way ideas and posts bounce off other people.

Love the tardis glasses case and as nice as a tardis would be complete with David Tennant, I think that having a small space beautifully organised is the way forward. I went to see Felix's studio recently which has a lot of things and LOADS of craft potential and deferred moments but it is amazingly well organised so the things don't feel overwhelming. I have always aspired to be more like you and I agree on some level that the idea of having a really large stash of fabric and yarn makes me feel slightly ill – I also think it goes against the nature of crafting which for me is very steeped in the whole “make and do” and reuse rather than wanton consumerism. For example, I’ve never really got scrapbooking and I feel slightly uncomfortable about buying really posh fabric for patchworking rather than using fabric scraps. I think that there is definitely more creativity involved with thrift and stashbusting, than just throwing a lot of money at a craft.

But I am also sadly a natural hoarder* which is where things become complicated and crafting can become a curse. There does become a point when keeping things to reuse becomes overwhelming. I recently went through my stash and donated to charity all the acrylic I wouldn’t knit and am going to sell/trade yarn that I can’t use. It made me feel a lot better that all of the wool I have is for a particular project and actually it isn’t that big, I definitely think it is important not to have more yarn that you would ever realistically need/knit in your lifetime. Also having a large stash would really diminish the fantasy crafting and planning element – I love planning projects and anticipating finding the right yarn etc. Felix has a different take because she finds it really inspiring to have a largish stash of yarn and fabric but I think that is because she is a different type of knitting – she does a lot of being inspired by what’s around her and improvises her patterns.

I also want to hear more about the waste management plant (I am very interested in “infrastructure” after visiting Didcot power station at school and a sewage treatment plant in my current job), I bet it was fascinating. I also love the idea of a cave of batteries. It’s wonderful indeed.

*I was very pleased when Kirsty told me she was a hoarder - I had her down as being minimalist as you. She mentioned that you even (shock horror) get rid of books.

I hope I didn't come over as too 'minimalist'. I'm not a hoarder, but I think that's because I am reconciled to being very messy. Much as I like order, I'm also really very lazy and quite scatty, and I know if I have too much stuff I'll get entirely lost in it.

Its also a bit of a political thing, about not wanting to be too attached to consumer products, and I count books as consumer products. I've published academically on how over-sentimentailsing literature can act to hide the commerical action at play, and I feel I should practise what I preach. Its not that I don't like books, I just don't feel the need to keep their physical form with me. If I kept a copy of every book I have loved and has had an impact on the construction of my sense of self, I need to build more than one extenstion to the flat. Instead, I have a memory, a bus pass and a set of library cards.

I suspect socialised organisation is the way to go - so we can store things like batteries en mass in caves. Freecycling too. And simple public depositories for items we can share, like libraries for books. But that's maybe just the socialist in me. The German waste place was amazing - I won this weird trip to Germany, Belgium & Luxemburg when I was 18 for writing an essay on multiculturalism and the EU and they organised visits for us to all sorts of odd places. We went to a great FE college too (they had a big shed where they got students to build a wall, decorate it, then demolish it, so they could learn about the building trade) and I geekily fell in love with German social policy. It was nearly 10 years ago now though. We did also go to a Beer festival and met the EU commisoners - it wasn't all rubbish dumps!

This is providing much food for thought – I’m getting very enthused by the idea of stripping down how many possessions I have! I didn't think you come across as a minimalist at all - I'm very messy too and that is why hoarding is such a nightmare. I have spent years trying to get rid of stuff and having quite big purges of giving things away which have been quite traumatic but these days I'm much better at it. Just takes training I reckon.

I complete agree about the political side as well and this is what I was thinking about in the original post - I spend a huge proportion of my working life talking about pro-environmental behaviours which people always bring back to "green consumerism" which I find really frustrating because I think that the reuse debate is a much more interesting debate to have and surely if we want to be green we ultimately need to cut down on consumerism as a whole (which seems to be a topic that no-one wants really to tackle!).

I think that books is really interesting territory – I was struck when working in publishing about how completely unenvironmental the book trade really is and often people who are quite environmental and unconsumerist in lots of ways still buy and keep books. I got quite hardline about this a couple of years ago and decided that I wouldn’t keep things that I didn’t LOVE, need academically (for my PhD which has never happened) or could find easily at a local library. Over time I have slightly relapsed and my pool of second-hand books has grown substantially although I’m about to cull I think. But there is something about how books are used to express identity – I guess I grew up thinking that the books on your bookshelf and the records you own do express your values. I’d really like to read your publication if it is available. I completely over-sentimentalise literature and I might use memory, bus pass and library tickets as my new minimalist mantra.

I love the idea of socialised organisation – I have been trying to work out if I could set up some kind of bakeware exchange for ages. The idea being that I never quite have cake tins or bakeware of the exact type for various recipes and I was struck when clearing out my grandma’s house how much space it takes up and how much must get thrown away in house clearances etc. I haven’t yet come up with a good logistically solution but I did wonder whether the local LETTS scheme might be the answer. But I can the Daily Mail fighting us all the way!

Oooh – your trip sounds fab. I keep meaning to go to Germany. I lived with lots of Germans during my first year at university and we had loads of fab conversations about socialism, Marxism and environmentalism. They just seem to have a lot of things spot on with environmental policy, I think next year maybe I’ll try visiting Berlin or a longer Europe train extravaganza.

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